Most home chefs dump their ground beef into a bowl and knead in
all the fixings: chopped onion, ketchup, red-pepper flakes. Then
they roll the dough into balls and flatten them with their hands
before tossing them on the grill.

But this method has some major drawbacks.

In a 2007 episode of the short-lived BBC show "In
Search of Perfection," Michelin three-star chef Heston
Blumenthal spent six months using science to create the "perfect
hamburger." His biggest revelation?

In order to achieve an "open," juicy texture, the grains
of ground meat should all fall in the same direction.

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There are two benefits to keeping the grains of meat running
straight: The first is to avoid the release of proteins that
could act as binding agents, and the second is to keep the
strings from becoming intertwined. Either could lead to a denser
and drier patty.

This is when the famed chef's method really veers off the path of
the traditional burger patty.

Instead of forming patties with his hands, he rolls the
entire pile of ground beef into a sausage-like tube using plastic
wrap.

Blumenthal's other big trick is to treat his pan like a
rotisserie instead of a grill.

He flips the burger every 20 or 30 seconds — a method he
says "drives a much more even temperature through the meat,"
resulting in a burger that's "nicely colored on outside, but
evenly cooked through the middle."